


Circles

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Helena warnings, Motorcycles, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-13 05:32:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 8,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2138829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've been on the road for a long time -- Helena thinks maybe they're running from something. She wishes Sarah would tell her what they're running from.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. let's play pretend

**Author's Note:**

> So Charlotte made the mistake of asking me for "SESTRA MOTORBIKE ADVENTURES" while I was in a bad place, emotionally, and this fell out. 
> 
> I have been referring to this as the "Sad WIP" for a while. Just to warn you.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (like we never needed [medicine](http://emmashepard.bandcamp.com/track/billionaires))

They’ve been on the road for two weeks. Sarah’s beginning to smell like sweat, and dirt, and the wind that Helena’s sure is tangled in her hair, leaving it falling in waves Helena wants to run her fingers through.

Helena doesn’t touch. She is very careful not to touch – not when she stays up at night, watching the motion of the stars overhead, and Sarah lets out small noises in her sleep; not when there is a smear of food on Sarah’s face; not when Sarah cannot quite fasten the buckle of the helmet Helena insists she wear.

(Helena is never afraid on motorbikes, but _Sarah_. Sarah is more important than anything, and the thought of something happening to her sends Helena’s stomach flipping, over and over and over, until she can’t even eat.

When Sarah takes the helmet off her hair floats up from her head, like it’s trying to escape. She never looks more like Helena than she does then. Helena doesn’t touch.)

She is already testing her luck with this, she thinks: it’s almost too much, the feeling of Sarah’s head against her shoulders, Sarah’s arms wrapped around her waist. When she drives she can feel three hearts beating: hers, the motorbikes, and Sarah’s. Sarah Sarah Sarah.

So: daytimes are easy. Daytimes are a slow and giddy roll of body heat, other heat rising in nauseous lines from the streets, the highways, the land on either side. The heat yawns and roars like a lion, roars like an engine, and sweat prickles between Helena’s hair and her skin. It trickles silently down the bones of her spine and stings along what could be feathers, if she had wings. She stays silent, shudders, watches the bike shudder in twin-time, listens to it roar: a challenge to the silence, a heart beating. Three hearts beating.

Daytimes are all silent but for that thudding, that beat-beat-beat of heart-heart-hearts. Sarah doesn’t say anything. Helena doesn’t either; she’s not sure she _could_ , not sure that the sensation of Sarah’s body pressed against her own could ever be small enough for her to speak.

She’s lucky she hasn’t said _I love you_ yet. She can feel it pushing against her throat sometimes, but she swallows it down and keeps riding, silent.

Nighttimes are harder. At night Sarah still doesn’t speak, climbs into her sleeping bag early and curls in on herself like she’s dying, like she’s hiding a stab wound. Helena doesn’t sleep, much; she watches Sarah in the dark, makes sure she’s still breathing, listens to the sound of her sister’s wet, snuffling breaths. She can always feel her mouth gaping open, feel tears pricking in her own eyes. Connection.

She wishes Sarah would tell her what’s wrong. She wants to know; she wants to help.

They’ve been on the road for two weeks. Two weeks since Sarah found her, said _I know you have a bike_ , said _I have to go, give me your bike_. Two weeks since Helena tried to say _I want to come with you, let me come with you, I need to come with you,_ but failed to say that. Two weeks since Sarah got it, anyway.

_I don’t even know how to ride a bike,_ she says at one point, hysterical, staring at the fire Helena made outside their tent. Then she folds in on herself and starts crying. Long, hiccupping sobs.

Helena thinks of telling Sarah that she could teach her – and she wants to, oh, wants to give the road to Sarah, wants to give the world to Sarah – but she’s not sure that’s what Sarah’s crying about.

She thinks of rubbing between Sarah’s shoulderblades and saying: _ssh_. The problem is that she’s not sure she’s welcome; she hovers, torn between action and its lack, until Sarah swipes angrily at her eyes and trudges off, into the woods.

She doesn’t talk about it. Two weeks. Two weeks of not-talking-about-it.

(Helena’s not even really sure what _it_ is, only that whatever they are circling around, tracing an arc around in burned rubber on the road, is big and hungry and hollow like a mouth. It is hungrier even than Helena; she guns the motor, goes faster, breathes deep through her nose to smell Sarah in the air around her.

This is it. This is all she has ever wanted. This is it. This is all she has ever wanted.)

Helena’s phone buzzes a few nights in, as she watches Sarah’s chest rise and fall, black-on-black in the night, a slow constant hush under the chirp of crickets. She stares at the phone in numb confusion when it lights up and smears her vision with stars, smug in its insistence that it has something worth listening to. Then she uncurls, quietly moves a few steps away from the tent. Now that Tomas is gone Sarah is the only one who has her number. Who would call _her?_

She throws the phone from hand to hand, feels the way it lights her hands up with tremors, waits. Listens to the crickets trill. Soon enough the call ends; her phone goes black, and Helena turns it over and over and over in her hands. Thinks about Sarah sleeping in the tent behind her, steady as a heartbeat.

Buzz. Her phone bursts to life again, wiping out the night world the way light always does. _1 new voicemail._ Helena looks back at the tent, rolls her tongue over her teeth, and sighs. Then she presses the shiny button.

_Helena? It’s – Cosima, we met, I don’t know if you remember, but_ [exhale] _we need your help. We being, um, me and Alison, that’s_ [laugh] _kind of the problem, I – okay. Um. Sarah’s – Sarah’s gone. She’s been gone for a few days, and_ [sniffle] _none of us can find her and we just – we just really, really need you. Please call back._

Her phone makes a soothing _beep_ and then goes silent. Helena looks at it like an animal that is going to bite. Then, in one snake-quick movement, she throws it on the ground and watches it shatter.


	2. there was a night you were transparent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (and i couldn't do [anything](http://emmashepard.bandcamp.com/track/marry-me-3))

Helena doesn’t mention the phone call the next morning, only watches Sarah over her mug of coffee-three-sugars-two-creams – actually, there might be more sugars. She looks at the pile of wrappers on the diner table and decides yes, that is more than three. She blows on her coffee. Drinks. Looks at Sarah.

_Your family is looking for you_ pushes at the roof of her mouth, bitter as Sarah’s coffee-black. Night and day. She takes another sip to push it back, reminds herself that _she_ is Sarah’s family, that they are fine, that this is how it is supposed to be. The two of them. Family.

The two of them and Kira.

Sometimes Helena forgets about Kira, when Sarah’s presence overwhelms, when she can taste Sarah on the roof of her mouth like a bitten tongue. If Sarah is the bitten tongue Kira is the place where the tooth was lost, that dark hole, that aching gum. Poking at where Kira should be makes Helena shiver, and ache.

_Your family is looking for you_ , beats the pulse at the roof of Helena’s mouth – she’s burned her mouth on her coffee – _where is Kira, is Kira alright, your family is looking for you, we should_ make _a family, we are a family, where is your family, where are we, Sarah. Sarah. Sarah._

She takes another big gulp of coffee, and makes a displeased sound when all she gets are dregs.

Sarah looks at her and laughs, a short sharp sound; then she makes a startled face, like she didn’t realize she could laugh, that her throat could do it. Helena’s starting to grin back (there is maybe nothing better than making Sarah smile, maybe _nothing_ ) but then Sarah goes cold as rivers and grabs a fistful of greasy bills from her pocket, throws them on the table, stands up to leave.

“Come on,” she says, “we got a while to go.”

Helena eyes the faces of dead men on the table and does not ask where they are going. She doesn’t ask. She is very careful not to ask.

(Money comes like this: Sarah’s hands in men’s pockets. Sarah’s hands in men’s hands, leading them to restrooms and back rooms and alleys where the lights flicker a sad not-color, like Helena’s hair. Helena’s hands quick on purse-straps, when Sarah isn’t looking, and quick into Sarah’s pocket, trailing against the lining of it on the way out.

Money comes the way death has always come: by hands.

Three weeks in, Helena wonders with a start how much of this Sarah had planned. Had she scrambled out the door? No, there is a tent and clothing, messy as it is, wide as Sarah’s eyes had been. Helena has run the memory of Sarah finding her between her hands so many times that it has blurred and worn down, but she thinks about the very faint trembling of Sarah’s hands and thinks: panicked, rushed, but planned.

Sarah fled to her like an animal, like a frightened animal. She left her family behind. She left Kira behind, and came to _Helena_ , and this was planned.

Not planned enough to bring money, though.

That’s alright. Helena’s never needed money, and she’s never needed Sarah to need her. She finds she likes the latter, though, likes the way it lights up her chest like a fire.)

She keeps not-asking as they go, as the wheels of Helena’s motorcycle crunch over the leaves that begin to fall and as Sarah curls closer to her to protect herself from the razor blade of the wind, cold where it slices against their skin-one-skin. But the hungry thing that is chasing them is beginning to snap at Helena’s heels, sit on her chest when she sleeps at night, curl up in her ribs like a snake.

She bites into new things – Twinkies from gas stations, bread-things called _pastries_ from warm restaurants that smell like coffee, gumballs and licorice and gummy worms – and dreams of apples.

But she is better than Eve; she does not ask about what caused Helena’s phone to fall or what makes Sarah cry out in her sleep.

Sarah doesn’t ask anything either, until she does.

“In the cage,” she says into the dark of the tent (she’s faceless, her back turned to Helena, and all Helena can see is the hunch of her sleeping back in the dark, the dark her eyes adjusted to a while ago) (her voice cracks on the last word, _cage_ ), “when I put the gun to your head—”

She pauses, breathes a few shuddery breaths. Helena wonders if she’s remembering, wonders what that image must be. She remembers. She was so full she couldn’t breathe through it, full with heaviness – _Kira_ – and hope – _Sarah_. It was too much to stand, but the thought that pounded in her head, tugged her fingers off the bars, was the thought of _deserving_.

She feels like she should say something, but the silence is fragile as a skull without a bullet in it, the miracle of bones. So she says nothing. She waits.

“Would you have let me do it,” Sarah whispers to the silence.

“Yes,” Helena says, simply, without pausing to think. Yes. She would have. Looking at it now it is easy to say: but then you would not have _this_. Looking at it _now_. At the time she had hurt Kira, who was a child and should not have been hurt and it was Helena’s _fault_ and she was a monster, wasn’t she, she was a monster.

“Thought so,” Sarah says. The words, in the air, sound like they have been pulled from the back of her throat.

Then she says nothing else, and eventually her breathing rocks and settles into sleep.

Helena falls asleep too, eventually. In the black she dreams the light of Sarah’s flashlight over and over and over again, a bright light against the darkness. When she wakes, early with the dawn, she soundlessly slips the pistol out of the bag slung over the side of the motorcycle, pulls out the cartridge, tucks it under her clothes.

It settles there, right above the scar Sarah left. Right across from her heart.  


	3. tell me your fears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (tell me you don't love me and i'll [go](http://emmashepard.bandcamp.com/track/marry-me-3#lyrics))

Sarah keeps asking her things, at night – then she starts asking things during the day, too, like she is hungry as Helena is, hungry to fill Sarah with Helena until there is none of Sarah left.

She asks Helena about hunger.

Helena says: it is like nothing you have ever known. Because this is true, possibly.

Sarah says: _try me._ Helena studies Sarah’s face, in the glow of the fire, the way the lack of light makes her eyes into two dark holes. She thinks, _yes, maybe._ Yes maybe. Sarah might not know starving, but she knows _hunger_.

So Helena spins stories like spinning riddles, like fingers folding paper. Once upon a time there was Helena, who was a skin pulled tight over hunger. She does not talk about Italy, or France, or Austria; she ducks neatly around how hungry she was, how hungry she had been, watching her well-fed doubles while she lurked outside, a feral thing. But that remembered hunger rolls in her stomach, cold like scales, cold like snakes, cold like rivers running. She wonders if her breath smells like apple seeds; she curls in on herself, tighter, as if to protect herself from the winds in Italy, and talks instead about convents.

When she was younger she was still Sarah, maybe, or close enough to that; same-hair-same-face-skin-one-skin. Tiny Sarah’s thumbs did not reach for eyes. Tiny Sarah’s hands did not reach for bread, did not learn not to reach for bread, did not learn the harsh hacking sounds of Ukrainian, did not learn the harsh language of fists and locked doors.

Or maybe she did. Helena thinks again about those eyes, the way they glitter across the fire.

Once upon a time there was Helena, who was always always hungry. She tells the story of Helena to Sarah while she eats, because memory is a tricky thing: the memory of Sarah fades fast as anything, so fast sometimes Helena thinks she is dreaming this, all of this. But memories cold as this grow and twist and settle heavy on Helena’s bones. Once upon a time there was Helena, who was always hungry, who is still always hungry. Sandwiches. Endless kinds of potatoes. Milkshakes. Dried jerky. Beans. Once upon a time. She is still hungry.

The best is when Sarah will offer up something back, some story about when she was a child; of course Helena wants to know all of it, each and every bit of it – easier to imagine herself there, smash their lives together like kissing dolls until the plastic is warm and they are _one_ – but Sarah is brittle as the tree branches they pass, faster now, starting to dapple with snow. Sarah is brittle and Helena does not want her to crack.

But Sarah says: Once upon a time there was Sarah, and hunger snapped at her heels. Sharp as teeth.

(Helena’s hunger is heavy; it drags her down. Sarah’s hunger is a quickfastthing and it makes her move quickfast. Hunger has shaped them differently, maybe.)

Sarah talks about running, talks about how her fingers shook on her eyeliner, talks about her first drink, talks faster and faster and maybe she _is_ trying to spill out all of Sarah, maybe she is trying to give everything to Helena so Sarah does not have to carry it.

Well. Almost everything.

Things Helena does not talk about: Italy, France, Austria.

Things Sarah does not talk about: Felix, Kira, family.

They have different kinds of ghosts, the two of them. But they do have ghosts. Helena can feel them, like wind on her skin.

Things Helena does not talk about: Aryanna, Danielle, Janika.

Things Sarah does not talk about: Alison, Cosima, Katja.

Things Sarah does talk about: Beth.

There was a time, once, and Elizabeth Childs was in it. Upon it. Then she took a few stumbling steps on the tracks and she was under it, that time. That’s all Sarah says. Well – not like that, not really. Instead she says _she killed herself_ , neat little words that fit in the mouth better, don’t twist themselves into your teeth like toothaches, stinging your gums.

Helena watches Sarah, watches the twist of her own hands in her lap, doesn’t say: _she would have died anyways_. Doesn’t talk about how she and Sarah met, the press of Beth’s body against hers, how wide Beth’s eyes were, how she wasn’t. Beth.

But Beth is safe enough to talk about, for the little they talk about her – she was, she wasn’t, she was Sarah, which is the best thing a person can be. Helena wonders why Sarah’s chosen to tell her about Beth, then she realizes there is no way for Helena to hurt Beth. Beth is past the point of being hurt.

So are the others, by now: Helena doesn’t know where Sarah’s phone is but her own is gone, and they are far far from the others, Sarah’s other-family. Surely they have to be getting close, now; Helena can smell the promise of spring in the air, under all the snow, feels like if she clawed her fingers under the freezing white of it she would find new growth.

But spring is a long way yet, and Helena buys mittens to wear and watches the cracked skin of Sarah’s hands around steaming travel cups off coffee. Snow dapples her hair, settles in her eyelashes. Maybe they could be happy.

There is a scar on Sarah’s knuckles that Helena does not know the source of, but she knows about the way Sarah’s bone grew back crooked, knows about the scar at her hairline, knows enough about Sarah to keep her living in Helena’s chest, even if she goes.

Maybe, maybe they could be happy.


	4. colder than i ever imagined

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (how dare you. how [dare](http://emmashepard.bandcamp.com/track/joanie-joanie#lyrics) you.)

What they are now is not quite happy – not close, not really, to that. Sarah still does not laugh, does not smile, does not tease the way she snapped her teeth at Felix, catching empty air and grinning a smug wolf-grin at the lack. Helena, cautious, does not try to bridge the gap.

Sarah lets out little sounds in her sleep, twitches; Helena doesn’t know if that’s just part of her, the way not sleeping is part of Helena. Doesn’t know if when Sarah was young, sleeping on floors and in strange beds and on trains, her face resting against the window – if, then, she curled in on herself, moaned _sorry_ , let out small heart-tugging whines that could be names, maybe.

When Helena was young she did not sleep. But there was no sound for her to listen in the dark then, only her own breathing. Now…well. It is still her own breathing. She still does not sleep.

Well – Helena does sleep, sometimes, when exhaustion pulls at her eyelids with small child-fingers. She falls asleep, she does, and then one night she wakes up to Sarah gone.

Waking up is like a hard punch to the chest: rib-cracking. Helena wakes up and the air is cold and still and smells like the winter air outside the tent. She looks at Sarah’s empty sleeping bag like it will tell her something, something besides the fact that Sarah got up less than an hour ago, something snapping at her heels, something that made her afraid – sweat drying on the fabric – something that sent her stumbling outside.

_No_ , she thinks, and the panic in that word, that syllable, could send a flock of birds springing from the trees outside, could crack the earth. _No_.

Her mouth is open and her breath is cracking through her chest faster than she can breathe it, fast too fast, _no_ please don’t go Sarah please don’t go oh no don’t go Sarah _no_ —

Helena fumbles for her breath, catches it, forces her mind to the killing-place it does not often go. She doesn’t like it there, anymore; she used to like it, used to like the way it made things clearer, but it’s not worth not feeling.

Now she needs it. She stops feeling, feels her breathing even out, and _thinks_.

The sleeping bag is still there. (Sarah—) All of Sarah’s belongings are still there. ( _Sarah—_ ) ( _Think_ , Helena, don’t be stupid.) Sarah just can’t sleep, that’s all. She’ll come back.

Helena lies awake in the dark for what could be minutes and what could be hours, not feeling anything in particular; it’s a sniper’s patience, and she feels like a sniper. Love and killing are too similar, in what they do for her, in what they ask from her. Time passes.

Eventually, she has to consider that Sarah is not coming back. By the time the thought has finished settling in her mind Helena is already standing, shoving boots on and a jacket and unzipping the flap of the tent in one motion.

The air is bittercold outside. Helena leaves the tent and enters winter’s mouth; winter’s teeth snap at her skin, but she isn’t particularly concerned. She’s sure the tongue tastes bigger predators, more fearsome predators, predators that have already marked Helena and are not ready to see her die. She ignores the burn of cold and trudges out into the snow that’s fallen – recent, after Sarah left. No footprints to find her way by.

_Snowfall_ , sings Helena’s brain, humming like a motorbike, _snowfall, no jacket, take shelter_.

Helena ducks her head in a nod of thanks and heads deeper into the trees, towards the places where there are less snow. She holds this state of mind in one hand and slowly, slowly with the other hand reaches for her connection with Sarah – it feels like reaching for a lifeline in the dark, but she grabs it.

_Keep moving keep your fingers warm the tent is_ that _way keep moving_ , says Helena’s brain, and Helena’s brain says _I am afraid and I want to be alone and I am moving like a wounded animal, blind. See me stumble._

_Broken tree branches,_ agrees Helena’s brain. _Wounded animal. Blind. Stumbling._

Out of the two of them it is always _Helena_ who should be the animal; yet here she is, taking human steps and not stumbling at all, keeping her eyes on the branches and not on the ground-beneath-snow.

Maybe that’s why she only finds Sarah by tripping on her, where she’s curled up in the snow, beneath the snow.

(“It’s okay,” a mother says to her daughter as Helena walks by, looking at them, mother-daughter-dog on the ground – or what used to be a dog. “He didn’t even feel it. I bet it was just like falling asleep—” and Helena wants to say _wrong_ , wants to say _I have seen myself die again and again and it is nothing like falling asleep at all_. Instead she keeps walking, promises if she has a child she will not lie to them, not like that.)

She looks like she’s asleep. She looks just like that. Helena’s coldness and stillness shatters like ice but holds together; underneath that like warm blood beneath cold skin, like a drowned body frozen beneath water, her connection with Sarah pulses like a heartbeat. She looks like she’s asleep. She’s not dead. She can’t be dead.

_Take her from the snow_ , sings Helena’s brain in a high shrill voice, _change the clothes get warm drinks in her body heat take her from the snow move_ fast _, Helena—_

_Check for a heartbeat, Helena,_ it adds guiltily, because even as sure and calm as this she assumes Sarah is alive, because – there is nothing else.

Helena removes her hands from her pockets, notes as if from far away that they are not shaking. She puts her fingers to Sarah’s neck.

There is a pulse. Helena makes a small broken noise, like a sob, and moves to carry her back to the tent. She pulls Sarah upright, slow – like a dream of dancing – and then slings her over Helena’s shoulder. Helena only staggers for a second at the weight and then they are moving, back to the tent, back home.

She follows her own footsteps back to the tent and settles Sarah, gently, inside, stripping her clothes neatly and wrapping her in her own sleeping bag, Helena’s sleeping bag, Helena. Helena folds her arms around her sister’s torso and waits, staring into space, her thoughts somehow still clean and precise as gun parts interlocking.

Sarah’s hair smells like snow. Helena waits.


	5. we can make up for

Helena doesn’t know how long it takes Sarah to warm, how long it takes her breathing to even out, only that she spends that time trying to figure out how to fit the wordless howling need in her chest into words, words that explain right that Sarah can’t leave her, that Sarah is beautiful and important and needs to live and should take _care_ of herself, should love herself because Helena loves her—

Her calm moves back to the back of her head, goes back to sleep, and it’s just Helena again in Helena’s head, thinking of Sarah.

Eventually Sarah stirs, and Helena sits up, curls in on herself on the other side of the tent. She is between Sarah and the exit. This is planned. This is planned, and Helena’s chest is heavy and sick with disappointment and love and anger and hurt and too many feelings to speak through.

She opens her mouth, but whatever words she was going to say sputter out and die on her tongue. Her mouth tastes like ash and the frozen beginnings of tears make her eyelashes stick together. _Why_ , she thinks. _Tell me why_.

Sarah sits up, stares at her, reaches with a tired hand to push her hair out of her face. There is something faded and cold and heavy about her, like Helena never removed her from the snow at all.

_Why_ , Helena thinks, and Helena says – blurts – “You should wear a jacket. When you go.” If you go. Please don’t go. Why.

Something like an earthquake rolls down Sarah’s spine and Helena wonders if her mouth tastes the same as Helena’s does, ash and dust, too many words to say. But no, she’s muttering something, some low hiccupping collection of sounds that Helena wants to capture in her hands and eat whole. Helena tilts her head to the side, makes a low confused sound, and Sarah laughs, hysterically. Her head whips up.

“Fuck _this_ ,” she snarls, the sound twisted and high and _wrong_ and there is something like a fever in the back of Sarah’s eyes, “you want to pretend it didn’t happen, like I’ll wear a bloody _jacket_ , like I’ll keep ridin’ on your bloody _bike_ with you, ‘cause this is all you ever wanted, isn’t it.”

It is. Helena doesn’t say that. She says, “Sarah—”

“You should have left me there,” Sarah says, a low moan of anger and grief, and now she’s crying. Her anger has sputtered out and gone. “You should have left me in the snow, left me to freeze, _shit_ —”

“I wouldn’t,” Helena says, frantic, desperate to shove her words between Sarah’s words like shoving Sarah between a gun and Rachel, like stopping Sarah’s words from hurting Sarah, hurting Helena, she _wouldn’t_ , she wouldn’t, “I wouldn’t ever—”

“ _Sarah_ ,” she says, desperate, watching her sister collapse in on herself, like a tent, like Helena’s dreams of the two of them, collapsing, “you’re my _sister_ ,” and even as she says that she knows she’s just doing that stupid Helena trick again, _stupid_ Helena, stupid, reaching for others’ words when her own don’t work right, when her own collapse and let themselves be buried by snow. Sarah is so good with words. When Sarah says _you’re my sister please put down the gun sister please_ Helena puts down the gun. When Helena says _you’re my sister please don’t_

_die_

Sarah just makes a desperate sound and shakes her head, back and forth, like she can shake Helena’s words away.

Helena continues anyways, _trying_ , “you can’t – you can’t – what about—”

What about Helena. What about Sarah-and-Helena, always moving forward, what about them. We make a family. Yes? Yes? Yes? But Sarah-and-Helena has never been enough family for Sarah, has it. Helena thought it would be enough, it’s not, it’s never enough, not for Sarah not enough.

Helena makes a frustrated sound, clenches her hands where they’re resting in her lap to avoid hitting her face, watches Sarah, thinks about touching, doesn’t doesn’t doesn’t doesn’t touch. Still doesn’t touch. Still _doesn’t_ touch, after all this time, months and months she doesn’t—

In. Out. This isn’t about Helena. This is all Helena has ever wanted. This is about how to make Sarah see that she matters, has always mattered, and Helena snarls angrily in the back of her head because she can’t touch but she can talk about what they have been not talking about, what they have been circling around.

She snaps, “Your _family_ , Sarah,” and Sarah’s head snaps up again, like breaking a neck, beautiful, beautiful Sarah with her eyes wide with fear and Helena thinks, maybe, maybe. “What about your family? Mrs. S and Felix and Cosima and Alison—”

“Stop,” Sarah says, low, shaking her head, “ _stop_ , Helena—”

“What about _Kira?!_ ” Helena screams.

“Kira is _dead!_ ” Sarah roars, like

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, that's not a typo.


	6. each

an animal,


	7. other's

like an animal,


	8. wounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (i can drown you out with [noise](http://emmashepard.bandcamp.com/track/politician-the-storm) so easily)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **[warnings: death, assisted suicide mention, suicide mention, self-harm]**

and then she says it again, softer. “Kira is _dead_.” Helena sits there and tries to remember if she has ever breathed. She doesn’t know how long it’s been since Sarah said – since – since Sarah said, doesn’t know if it’s been hours or days or maybe entire years that she’s been sitting here, trying to remember how breathing goes. Her ribs feel like they’ve been smashed in, like she’s been struck in the chest by a car, like she’s been broken in half.

“Kira is dead,” Sarah says again, like the first two times weren’t enough, “and you’re the only one who’d _get_ it, get that it was my fault.”

She’s watching Helena; there’s something hungry in her eyes and the two of them are very, very still. Somewhere outside the sun is rising. Helena wonders what it’s like, feeling the sun on your skin. She wonders. Kira is dead.

_Would you have let me do it_ , Sarah said, and Helena rolls that conversation over in her mind, slowly, like the arrival of spring, cracking the frost of her own _stupid – stupid –_ cracking the frost of her love.

What did Sarah tell her? Sarah told Helena everything about Sarah, threw everything about Sarah at Helena, and then she told Helena about Beth.

Helena’s eyes close and her head bows her neck forward, down. She thinks about Beth. She thinks about getting on a train and riding that train away from everyone you’ve ever known, a long long way away, knowing that any time you can stop the train and walk in front of it. Riding your death on its back.

First you take off your shoes. Then you take off your jacket. You leave everything that is yourself on the floor of the train because the train is just a machine, a stupid machine that thinks it loves you and will kill you without even thinking about it. You could die whenever you wanted to. You could die any minute at all.

Stupid Helena. Sarah didn’t tell Helena about Beth because Beth was past the point of being hurt. That wasn’t the reason at all.

“Because of the…accident,” she says, slowly, words crackling with rust.

“Because you would’ve let me,” Sarah says quietly, “and now I’m letting you.”

_I cannot kill you, sister_ , Helena thinks, _like you could not kill me_ , but her past self was stupid too, wasn’t she. And Helena can’t say _I won’t, I can’t, I would never_ , because then what’s to stop Sarah from leaving, what’s to stop Sarah from finding a real train, a better one?

“You want to die?” she asks, unbelieving, and Sarah tries to do several motions at once, shaking her head, shrugging, her hand moving in aborted motion towards her hair – the general image Helena gets is that she’s shrinking, moving back.

“I deserve it,” Sarah whispers, “my _daughter_ —”

And then she’s gone, crying, like it’s the end of the world, like she’s given up completely. Kira is dead. Helena thinks about the weight of the cartridge in her jacket, lets out a shuddering sigh, and moves in one desperate, jagged movement to where Sarah is, throws her arms around her sister.

Sarah collapses on her shoulder. They fit together perfectly, like puzzle pieces, like their hands wrapped around each other. Helena keeps her eyes wide open and listens to Sarah sob; then, oh, Helena’s crying too, those heartbreaking sobs that only come when you are too full, when you don’t know how to get it out, when you are angry and afraid and so sad it feels like your heart is ripping open. Those kinds of sobs.

But it passes quickly – Helena’s never been one for crying, not really, never quite figured it out – and then she just stays very still, feels the way Sarah’s body shakes Helena’s, so it’s like Helena is still crying, like they’re still one person. Helena's hand reaches out without Helena saying so and begins to rub circles onto Sarah’s back. Kira is dead. Sssh, ssssh, sssssh. She shouldn’t be thinking about how fragile Sarah’s back seems under her hand, probably, how Helena just has to twitch her shoulder a little bit and feel the way Sarah’s nose and chin and bones are right up against Helena’s own bones. But she’s never been very good at separating love from everything else, so she thinks about all of it anyways.

Eventually Sarah calms too and Helena realizes that her sister has started dozing on her shoulder, eyes fluttering, muttering nonsense syllables, low heartbroken sounds. Kira is dead. Helena slowly, carefully, shifts Sarah off her shoulder, back onto her sleeping bag, pulls the edge of it over the beautiful wingless curve of Sarah’s back.

Then she settles in to think.

She wishes she hadn’t smashed her phone – but there wasn’t a choice at the time, was there, just like there hadn’t been a choice when Helena was in the cage, just like there hasn’t been a choice any other time, when it came to Sarah. Helena props her elbows on her folded legs and rests her face on her fists, feels blood rush to her hands, thinks.

They can’t keep going, can they. Sarah will never be happy like this. Sarah will only feel a strange sick sort of pride at her own cleverness, staying so far away from her family, keeping Helena in her hand like a knife.

Helena doesn’t want to be a knife. Helena is so, so tired of being a knife.

So they need to go back, then, back then, back. They need. They need to go back. Back. They need.

Helena sucks her lips between her teeth to keep from making a sound. Back. And Sarah will vanish into the gaping mouth of all those laughing friendly faces, those casual hands, and she will be gone.

And Helena, well, she’ll have nothing. But she always has.

She can – she can keep pretending, yes? For a little while. It’ll be like a game, like killing. How to make Sarah stay, and not run, and think that Helena would ever – ever – ever—

She can keep pretending, and turn them around, and send them back.

Not home. It’s not home. It’ll _never_ be home. Kira is dead. Helena looks over at Sarah, asleep, and then turns in on herself in her desperation, shoves her hand between her teeth and begins to cry, again, biting down. She needs the pain, desperately. She needs something sharp as cold and bright as razors, something to cling to in this sea of Kira is dead. Kira is dead Helena is lost and drowning and she tastes her own blood, bright as life, between her teeth. She keeps crying. Kira is the best thing Helena has ever known, and the truest, and Helena has never even said goodbye to her.

_Goodnight, angel_ , she thinks, like it’ll be enough, Kira is dead it won’t be enough, Kira is dead it’ll never be enough, Kira is dead Sarah is gone Helena is lost we make a family yes? Yes? Yes? Yes? Yes? Yes? Yes?

Helena doesn’t know how long it takes her to fall asleep but when she does Kira is kneeling in front of her; the sun rises like a halo behind her hair and she pulls Helena’s hand out of her mouth with a smile. _It’s okay,_ she says, firmly, _I told you I had to go back_ , and to Helena’s mind it makes perfect sense – Kira has always been an angel, and of course they needed her up there.

_We needed you too_ , she says, and Kira just giggles and folds her hand around Helena’s. _Don’t be silly,_ she says, _you—_

Helena can feel that whatever Kira is going to say next will make sense, will make everything make sense, will make Helena feel alright.

Helena wakes up. Her hand is folded around her own hand. Kira is dead. The roof of Helena’s mouth tastes like blood. Sarah is asleep across the tent, still, her chest rising and falling in steady movements. Helena’s certain she was dreaming about something important, but when she closes her eyes to try and remember the dream is gone. 


	9. remember when you said you'd bury me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (oh well i guess you said [a lot of things](http://emmashepard.bandcamp.com/track/politician-the-storm))

The next day Helena pretends that nothing happened, just like Sarah said, just like she’s been doing her whole life: being what others say she will be, doing what others say she will do. They get on the road, and Helena ignores with a pressure like grinding your teeth the way Sarah’s looking at her, quick raw little glances, something sickeningly close to hope.

She lets her anger bubble close to the surface of her skin – not close enough to bite, no, not close enough to send her hand around Sarah’s throat, but close – so that Sarah can smell it on the air, and be close to satisfied. So close she can almost touch it, maybe, but not close enough to _do_ anything, not close enough to make a difference.

Oh. Helena wasn’t talking about Sarah at all, was she.

They get on the road and stop at the first truck stop they find, where Sarah moves off to the bathroom and Helena quickly finds a map, spreads it out on the table. There is something comforting about the weight of her finger on the map, pinning her down. _You are here_. Yes. You are here, and only here, and this is you, and you are here. Right here.

“Right here” is not that far from     home, actually; after a while they’d run out of land, turned around, rode in circles. Stupid Helena, always going in circles, always thinking there is going to be something different waiting for you once you make it around. Stupid.

The point is this: it won’t be that difficult, will it, to make it back    home. Without Sarah even knowing, or caring, or realizing that Helena is lying to her, that Helena would never kill her, that Helena is dragging her back  home to people who will stroke the hair from Sarah’s brow and say _it wasn’t your fault, you couldn’t have known_ , back  home to where Sarah will sit there and her guilt and certainty will slosh back and forth in her stomach and she will hate Helena, for bringing her home, and she will hate herself, and she will hate everyone around her.

Helena has always been moved by love; much like crying, she doesn’t think she could understand that sort of hate. But thinking about it makes Helena’s brain stir and sing _every time they tell me it wasn’t my fault I get more certain they are lying to me, everyone is lying to me, I’m useless and it should have been me it should have been me I deserved it I’ll lie and pretend because that’s what I do and then when they stop watching I’ll go for a—_

In the back of the truck stop Sarah comes out of the bathroom; Helena looks at the map one more time, traces the route back home with the tip of her finger, and shoves it back into the rack. Then she bounds over to where Sarah’s emerging, looking like a hunted thing, and says “Breakfast?”

Sarah eats like she’s starving, and Helena feels that funny not-pain that means Sarah is acting like Helena again. It always almost hurts, when she does that, just from the beauty of it. Helena’s brain has been murmuring low, like a river, ever since she reached for Sarah in the first place, and now it’s humming to itself _not a point anymore not really I’m so hungry I’ve always been hungry there is a hole in my chest and why not fill it no point no point no point_ —

This goes on for a while. Helena slides her finger around the edge of her plate to suck up sauce and then they’re off again, back on the road. It’s cold, and all the snow by the edge of the row is grey and partially melted, dirt and slush. The world looks cold and tired; it looks like how Helena feels, how Sarah feels where she’s slumped against Helena’s back. Helena hates that Sarah thinks it’s alright to touch Helena now – because it is, and Helena hates that, hates that too – and how Sarah throws herself into touching Helena wholeheartedly, like now that she thinks Helena will kill her Helena is the safest thing in the world.

Helena’s eyes keep tearing up as they drive, and she hates that too. Hate hate hate _hate hate hate_ hate _hate_ hate, Helena’s brain and Helena’s brain singing in twin voices. Possibly she is too close to Sarah, now, and Sarah is bleeding into Helena, and soon they’ll finally be one person and that person will shoot herself in the head. Oh, Helena is so tired. It’s getting to the point where she can barely see the road through her own tears. Her head aches.

It’s almost like the first two weeks again, except now it is Sarah who is watching Helena and it is Helena who is crying, while Sarah is asleep. Her face hurts from how much she’s hitting it, and she can feel her heartbeat in her back, and she hates being back in this place, hates what’s expected from her, she is _so_ tired and the air is so quiet, now, and cold. That’s the difference: Helena is the silent one, not Sarah, and their breath freezes on their lips instead of shimmering like heat waves.

It’s a mirror, and Helena obeys the rules of it: she drives backwards, back to where they started. They are coming full-circle. Helena’s tears freeze on her eyelashes and she wishes Sarah would hold Helena, run fingers through Helena’s hair, says _it’s alright_ , say _the two of us, we’ll heal each other, we won’t need anyone and I’m sorry that you thought we did. I’m so sorry, Helena. I love you so much_.

She will never say that. She will never accept that her daughter’s death wasn’t her fault – Helena wouldn’t, probably, if it was her daughter. If. Possibly the only reason Sarah is staying around is because she thinks Helena is driving them to some final place, where she will pull out a gun and put Sarah down like a dog.

Who knows why Sarah is staying around. Helena doesn’t. Helena’s mind is quiet, and the road is quiet, and the two of them they are so quiet, and Helena is beginning to recognize landmarks again, and she wishes there was some way to say goodbye, she wishes so desperately that Sarah will apologize so that Helena could apologize too.

Sarah will never apologize. Sarah will never say she loves Helena, and Helena is tired of pretending otherwise.

She is tired, really, of pretending.

Sarah is maybe dozing on Helena’s back as they drive back into the city – or maybe she just doesn’t care anymore, maybe she’s given up. Her eyes are dead – and Helena knows, knows what Sarah’s eyes look like when they are in a body lying dead on the ground – as she stumbles off to wash her face in a sink, when they stop at a gas station on the edge of the city. Dangling over the edge of a pit.

Helena rolls coins in her hand and thinks – it’s not too late. They could turn around.

Then she sighs, eyes the pay phone, and calls the police station.

It takes a long time, too long, to get from the police to Arthur Bell, but she gets him eventually, shifts from foot to foot, eyes the bathroom door and doesn’t say anything except “I want to speak to Cosima,” over and over. Every time Arthur says _Sarah_ Helena’s heart misses a beat, and so she’s dizzy from lack of oxygen by the time Cosima is on the phone.

“I found Sarah,” she says quietly, and closes her eyes to keep from crying.


	10. i don't want to go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (unless you go i don’t want to go unless you go i don’t want to go unless you go i don’t want to [go](http://emmashepard.bandcamp.com/track/where-you-are))

Helena’s managed to have a conversation of “yes” and various small sounds and has wiped all of the tears off her face with a napkin by the time Sarah emerges from the bathroom; Helena thinks of her in there, under the hungry lighting, and feels a guilty sort of love for how she’d look at herself, see all the bad things about herself. In a way this is alright – Helena could see all the good parts of Sarah, would tell her if she asked. But she won’t. So. Instead Helena rolls the address she was given around in her mind, feels the streets fit together, click click click, and figures out how to go.

It’s surprisingly – well. Helena doesn’t know the word for it, but it feels like something like this should be very big, should be worth something, what they have been building to week after week after week. Instead it is a short ride; then again, Helena is going very very fast, so fast Sarah will not have time to look where they are going, so fast the scenery blurs and she can convince herself that’s where the tears are coming from – the wind, and not the guilt and grief that is curling down Helena’s throat, coiling around her heart and her bullet wound and her bullets and squeezing. It’s not from that. Helena’s _fine_. Look at her, doing the right thing. Look at her, keeping her sister safe. What a good sister Helena is.

The address is somewhere new – not Felix’s apartment, or Beth’s, or the house that either belonged to Helena and Sarah’s mother or Sarah’s mother; it’s an apartment in a place Helena has never been, and as she whips through the streets with a giddy hollow surge of adrenaline she wonders if this is because everyone else has been wading through their own grief, flooding their empty rooms and making their legs too heavy to walk.

New start, maybe. By now the start has gotten old and cold and hard, like food left out too long.

Then again look at Helena-and-Sarah’s new start. Look at how it has circled around and become not new, not a start of anything. Look at what happens when…well. Any number of things. When you try to do the right thing, mostly. So many right things gone so wrong. So many right things gone so, so wrong, oh wrong, so wrong. Oh.

Helena rolls to a stop. The sound of the motorcycle cooling down is very loud, in the quiet of the street. There is something loud in the crackles and pops, something like a breaking – breaking of a circle, maybe, or a sharp wrench of a bone popping out of place.

Anyways. Helena hops her wobbly way off the bike and waits for Sarah to get off.

“Where’re we goin’,” Sarah asks with one part bitterness, the sort of distrust that is such a beautiful part of Sarah, and one part a small tender resigned sort of hope.

_We’re going home, Sarah,_ Helena thinks, angrily, sourly, the thought sharp as a knife in the back of her mind. Out loud she says nothing, shrugs, looks over her shoulder in a silent _are you coming?_

Sarah follows. Probably for the last time.

They trudge up the stairs and Helena doesn’t cry, not even a little bit, and if she did she wouldn’t swipe at her face with her sleeve to smell motor oil, see if she can smell Sarah’s ghost, the wind that Helena’s sure tangled its way into Sarah’s hair, _something_ , some sign that _any_ of this meant _anything_.

No sign comes. If Helena had cried, if she had wiped her face, it would have smelled of dust and snow, the absence of scent, the wearing-down of everything. The lack of color, the death of seasons, the way sisters move farther and farther apart with time until they do not even know each other. All that, trapped between the fibers of Helena’s sleeve.

If she had cried. Which she hadn’t.

_I’m sorry_ , she thinks, as they make it up to the fourth floor, and she turns one last time to look at her sister – on the edge of the light, she looks back at Sarah. Never her Sarah. Just Sarah. Sarah’s looking at her with vague confusion, like a child waiting to be led, like Helena, once. Helena feels a sharp urge, sweet in its desperation, to tuck hair behind Sarah’s ear. Instead she turns back around and passes one door, another, another, then stops at the fourth.

Sarah catches up to her, lingers on the balls of her feet. _I’m sorry_ , Helena thinks, knocking one, two, three times on the door and circling so she is behind Sarah. Always always Helena is between Sarah and the exit. Always she will try so hard to stop Sarah from being hurt – but what is the point, maybe, in trying.

She hears the door open and shuts her eyes, just for a second, just to avoid that first spark of recognition in Sarah’s eyes, just for a second.

“Sarah?” Cosima asks, brokenly, her words full of all the hope that Helena has lost.

Helena opens her eyes, meets Sarah’s eyes; Sarah is looking at Helena like it is the end of the world. Sarah is looking at Helena like Helena is lost, like Sarah is lost, and isn’t it true? It is, it’s true. They are all lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes on this chapter:  
> Helena, darling, the world you are looking for is “anticlimactic.”
> 
> Helena turning back to look at Sarah is a direct reference to Virgil’s telling of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice – it’s even directly quoted – because I am pretentious as all hell. You’re welcome. 
> 
> Please tell me if you cried. I thirst for your tears.

**Author's Note:**

> You are worth every minute that I have to be patient  
> You are worth every minute that I have to be patient  
> You are worth every minute that I have to be patient  
> You are worth every minute, you are worth every minute
> 
> Let's find a train that goes in circles  
> 'Cause I don't want to go unless you go  
> I don't want to go unless you go  
> I don't want to go unless you go  
> I don't want to go--  
> \--"Where You Are," Emma Shepard
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed!


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